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STAR WARS EPISODE I: Dawn of War (Old Version) (* unfinished project *)

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Hello!

I have been watching fan edits for a few years now, and I have tinkered around with editing in the past, but this is my first full-length project!

STAR WARS: Dawn of War is my upcoming fan edit of THE PHANTOM MENACE.

My edit won’t be the traditional “Cut poop jokes and Midichlorians” edit (Even though those things are getting cut). This will be a complete re-imagining of the film from nearly the ground up. The taxation of trade routes isn’t being debated. Chancellor elections aren’t happening. The Galaxy is on the brink of total war.

The SEPARATIST ALLIANCE is displeased with the Galactic Republic, claiming that it is becoming more and more corrupt under the leadership of CHANCELLOR PALPATINE.

In an effort to become powerful enough to overthrow the Republic, the Separatists are recruiting systems into their alliance. Naboo is one system that the Alliance have had their eyes on because of its strong political influence in the senate. After rejecting Dooku’s offer, his forces invade the planet, forcing the Republic to send two Jedi Knights to rescue the queen and escort her to safety on Coruscant.

During the escape, Dooku contacts the worried Queen, offering one more chance to join his Alliance. She declines. Just before her ship makes the jump to hyperspace, a droid fighter destroys one of the ships engines, sending her and her crew into the Outer Rim.

They make an emergency landing on Tatooine, traveling into a city in the hopes of finding the parts that they need. There they meet Anakin, an slave with a dream of seeing the stars. He becomes fast friends with Qui Gon. After Qui Gon purchases the parts, he runs away with the slave boy in order to enlist him into the Jedi Order. They’re attacked en route to the ship by a masked figure with a red lightsaber. The ship takes off and makes its way to Coruscant. On the ship, Anakin meets Padme, a handmaiden to the queen.

Anakin is accepted into the Jedi Academy. Palpatine convinces the senate to create a Grand Army of the Republic to fight the Separatists across the galaxy. Soldiers are enlisted or volunteer into the service. The Republic sends its army to Naboo in order to reclaim it. A strike team of Nabooians is sent down to the surface while the attack on the Separatist Command Ship is carried out by the Republic Navy.

Dooku escapes, Qui Gon dies, Maul is killed, the day is saved!

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MAIN GOALS OF THIS EDIT:

The movie starts with the Queen escaping the Separatists attack on her home world, escorted by two brave Jedi Knights. This cuts out boring negotiations and Gungans from the plot. Poor line delivery will either be cut or dubbed. Scenes on Coruscant will be heavily cut or re-purposed.

In the Phantom Menace, the primary antagonists are the Trade Federation. This is a problem because they don’t remain the antagonists throughout the trilogy. To remedy this, they will become the Separatist Alliance. To help reinforce “inter-connectivity”, Dooku will become the main villain of this edit. Using deleted scenes from Episode II, he will taunt the queen as she makes her escape from the Naboo system, on the brink of complete invasion.

Of all of my problems with the Prequel Trilogy, the only thing that irks me more than the dialogue is the technology. In the original trilogy the hologram of the DS II is the most advanced non-weapon tech we see, yet in the Prequels we see holograms and hovering stuff everywhere. To make the Prequels seem more like they take place many years before the Originals, the Naboo ships will no longer be extremely polished and the display screens will show dots and lines! Instead of making OT tech comply to the prequels, prequel tech will comply to the OT!


(The above image is from a test animation of the final battle.)
Using Source Filmmaker and models from Battlefront 2, all (space) battle scenes in the film will be remade to fit to my story and plot.

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Other Edits:

-Yoda will not appear, he will be mentioned.
-Qui Gon is not Obi-Wan’s master. They are both Jedi Knights.
-Color correct the entire film to feel more like the OT.
-Apply grain to the entire film
-3PO and R2 won’t appear
-Qui Gon will have a blue saber

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Thanks for reading!

The first few teasers and previews have been removed for privacy reasons. If anyone really wants to see them, I’ll gladly rehost them on Vimeo.
Coruscant Preview: https://vimeo.com/248609741 Password: ending
Final Preview: https://vimeo.com/249448162 password: final

There are also many image-based previews spread throughout this page.

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Sounds intriguing and super ambitious! Do you have plans for what you’re going to do with II and III (assuming you’re going to do them as well)?

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ChainsawAsh said:

Sounds intriguing and super ambitious! Do you have plans for what you’re going to do with II and III (assuming you’re going to do them as well)?

Thank you for your kind words!

Episode II would have nothing to do with Clones, as the Clone Wars aren’t happening. It would probably start with an Acclamator Star Destroyer in space which is suddenly attacked and destroyed by droids. This would kick off the action of the plot, with Obi Wan investigating the last known location of the ship, which turns out to be Geonosis. Meanwhile Anakin is hanging out with Beru and Owen on Tatooine, he learns that his mom has been captured, that whole thing happens. Then the Geonosis Colosseum scene would happen except without 200 Jedi showing up. Obi Wan would finally confront Dooku, and Dooku escapes again. Anakin and Padme marry on Tatooine.

Episode III would start with the chancellor being captured by Dooku as a means to end the war. Anakin and Obi Wan rescue him, kill Dooku. The war is over. Then the rest of the movie would have Palpatine influencing Anakin without needing to mention his wife. I would also fix the bit of continuity with the OT where Obi Wan says “I haven’t gone by the name Obi Wan since oh before you were born.” by adding a timeskip after Anakin turns of a few months probably.

P.S: Here’s a proof of concept of the “old technology”

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Looks very interesting. I’ve gotta say that I’m a fan of how you presented your ideas, even if that seems like a silly thing to notice; the little “title cards” make things look very professional.

I’m a big fan of the Old Tech mockup.

How much are you planning on including Dooku in this, and how will that be accomplished? Will he mostly be seen in holograms? Or will he be physically interacting with other characters?

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Wow very ambitious… color me impressed being able to accomplish this. I am curious, based on your second reply… are you removing the clones? Or is that specially episode II?

“Because you are a PalpaWalker?”

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Jeebus said:

In the film there will only be one Doughnut ship, and he will be on the bridge of it most of the time. He will also be in the conference room, where he talks to the queen about the Republic needing to start over and such. He’s sort of going to be playing the Tarkin role to the Nemoidians Vader? If that makes any sense.

I’m not certain if I want Dooku to know about Maul, though. I sort of want the Separatists and the Sith to be separate entities. I think it would be cool if the first time we see Maul it’s him attacking Qui Gon. I’m not sure.

Dooku is gonna bail at the start of the final battle, though. He’s going to do what Tarkin didn’t and evacuate.

JEDIT: Thanks for the kind words!

jarbear said:

Clones aren’t gonna be a part of my trilogy at all because I can’t think of a way to make Obi Wan serving Bail make sense without that being a separate event. “Clone” Armor will be present in the trilogy, it’s just that it will be precursor Stormtrooper armor.

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Intriguing, nice ideas! I hope you can pull it off. I may be able to help with certain things down the line. Looking forward to seeing the preview.

“Always in motion is the future” 🌌

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The preview is going to be a few finished shots with storyboards as supplement. Temporary SFX and good ol’ text to speech.

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snooker said:

Jeebus said:

In the film there will only be one Doughnut ship, and he will be on the bridge of it most of the time. He will be in the conference room , where he talks to the queen about the Republic needing to start over and such. He’s sort of going to be playing the Tarkin role to the Nemoidians Vader? If that makes any sense.

I assume you’re going to be using this scene, albeit heavily edited, for his first contact with the Queen. I hope it doesn’t seem like I’m prying too much, but will she be physically on the ship with him for this, or will they be hologramming?

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Jeebus said:

As the Nubian is escaping the system, the giant doughnut emerges from hyperspace. Someone off-screen will say “Incoming transmission, your highness”. All of the relevant parts of the Queen talking to the Nemoidians will be cut with Dooku’s lines. It will be changed into holograms, albeit low tech ones.

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The preview has been uploaded! Please keep in mind that most of this is storyboards, crude ones at that.

EDITED LINK OUT

If you need a description of the storyboards, turn on the captions.

When I wake up I’ll start actually finalizing some of those shots.

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I wish you all the success in the world. The prequels exist and there are some nice designs and a few okay performance moments but they are are not the films we were promised around 1980.

I still think the logical progression for this story is to have the Queen on Coruscant and hear of the invasion. Then voyage back to rescue her people. It knocks all the events into the same sort of simple linear progression that worked so well on the first film.

I’d also have Yoda mentioned but not seen. Have him like Jabba was in the theatrical OT build him up to be a big thing when Obi-Wan’s ghost mentions him in ESB. Also cutting Artoo and Threepio is probably an error. They are the baton that’s passed down through this saga. Threepio’s origins are stupid in the original version but Artoo makes sense. Having Threepio a translator droid on either the Queen’s ship or the Fed’s ship and removing him from Anakin’s childhood seems the way to go.

Also the Federation need a more tangible reason to want this planet. I suggested some time ago that before joining the Republic the Feds owned the planet and were forced to relinquish it as one of their stipulations for joining. So you have the Gungans who venerated the Feds as Gods being resentful of the humans on the planet who liberated them and stole their cargo cult religion from them.

With the Republic becoming more divided and weak the Viceroy sees a chance to prop up his own power by reclaiming an old colony (see Londo Mollari for details). He cuts a deal with the Sith to sort out the legal situation not seeing the bigger picture.

The Prequels are the backstory of the original trilogy so for them to work they need their own backstory. The current one is just not rich enough and it percolates this weakness through all the comprimised elements of these films.

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Bingowings said:

That’s a great backstory, however that’s not something I see happening in my edit.

In 1977, all of the backstory that people needed was that some rebels stole some plans. That was it. I don’t want viewers to have to read a few paragraphs of backstory before starting up the movie. I want all the viewer needs to know to be in the crawl, which would mention the Separatist Alliance, the Republic, and two Jedi rescuing the queen.

Also, 3PO and R2 contribute nothing to the plots of any of the movies. They are fan service for fan service’s sake (in my opinion)

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snooker said:

Bingowings said:

That’s a great backstory, however that’s not something I see happening in my edit.

In 1977, all of the backstory that people needed was that some rebels stole some plans. That was it. I don’t want viewers to have to read a few paragraphs of backstory before starting up the movie. I want all the viewer needs to know to be in the crawl, which would mention the Separatist Alliance, the Republic, and two Jedi rescuing the queen.

Also, 3PO and R2 contribute nothing to the plots of any of the movies. They are fan service for fan service’s sake (in my opinion)

The backstory in 1977 was the Clone Wars, the fall of the Jedi, the betrayal by Darth Vader, the murder of Luke’s dad. And a battle where secret plans were transmitted to Leia’s ship. There is a huge back story underpinning that simple tale. For the prequels (which mostly tell that story) you need a new back story. Who is Palpatine, what are these Sith and why do they want revenge? Why is the Republic falling to pieces? Why do the Federation want this particular planet (there are probably billions of them in the Star Wars galaxy)? The present springs from the past. You need a more compelling past for these films. And a more simple present. The droids aren’t just fan service. They are the Greek chorus. They need to be there but doing something that makes sense. IMHO

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Bingowings said:

The Sith are not a real presence in this edit, so explaining them can come later in the trilogy. They might get mentioned, though.

The Separatists want Naboo because it is the home world of the Supreme Chancellor, making it the most influential political power in the Senate. They were hoping to have the Queen’s cooperation in order to use her to rally up more systems to their cause. There will be an exposition dump scene where the Nemoidians (Re-dubbed and subtitled) will discuss specifics and perhaps talk to a mercenary named Maul via hologram. This would sort of take the place of the conference scene in A New Hope.

Qui Gon will explain the force to Anakin, therefore explaining it to the audience.

Palpatine is the leader of the Republic, that’s all we need to know in this movie because he has a very minor role, only creating the Army.

The Republic isn’t dying just yet, it’s just becoming more corrupt. To help visually show this, Republic ships will be a cold Imperial Gray.

Thank you for the help!

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This looks pretty awesome… great preview! looking forward to seeing the finished product (and more previews in the meantime)!

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Is there a chance hosting your previews in another way as the one you link to doesn’t happen. 🍻

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Bingowings said:

Is there a chance hosting your previews in another way as the one you link to doesn’t happen. 🍻

I’m sorry but I don’t understand what you’re asking?

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snooker said:

Bingowings said:

Is there a chance hosting your previews in another way as the one you link to doesn’t happen. 🍻

I’m sorry but I don’t understand what you’re asking?

Sorry for some reason youtube wasn’t showing your animatic but now it is. Modern technology doesn’t love me I guess 😄

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Very interested.

There are a few shots where the ships are a little slow, though, in your preview. I recommend you speed them up.

Reading R + L ≠ J theories

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Which shots specifically? I’ve already redone the second shot (with the pink comic sans).

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Does anyone have any suggestions for music to use after the crawl down? I’m having a hard time finding one that fits.

EDIT:
The next preview will be with the completion of the opening scene.